


A Personal War

by qwanderer



Series: The Wars We Fight [2]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-02
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-09-05 21:47:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16819093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qwanderer/pseuds/qwanderer
Summary: "You're an Avenger. Surely you can think of something to avenge."





	A Personal War

Loki seeks out his favorite of the Avengers, first. He seeks out Tony Stark. 

He tells himself that this kind of failure will hardly sit better on Tony's shoulders than it ever does on Loki's. He braces himself. 

Still, he's shocked by what he finds. 

Loki recalls himself as Thanos found him. Broken and confused and scattered. Drained. Empty. 

_Oh, Tony..._

He strides over, frustrated with himself for waiting, frustrated with the paltry leavings he now has to work with. 

"Get up," he barks at the Avenger. Sobers him with a touch, and begins to haul him upright. "You're an Avenger. Surely you can think of something to avenge." 

The eyes that turn on Loki make him pause, and set the man back down in his chair. This is not an Avenger. Not right now. This is a lost soul. 

The empty eyes blink at him. 

"Oh," he says. "Yeah. Yup. I've gone to hell. As much sense as anything." 

There is a long moment where Loki invents and discards lies, approaches, manipulations, other courses of action. None of it seems enough. Not for this. 

He responds, instead, to the words at face value. 

"The domain of Hela is where defeated warriors are made lifeless zombies," he says, thinking of his sister and her terrible, wrong-looking army. "...So perhaps." 

Stark closes his eyes and breathes out. 

After a moment, he speaks, like the echo of a long-ago life. Like a ghost. 

"I'll never see Pepper again, or Peter," and here, his voice breaks, but after a moment he continues in the previous dead tone. "Or so many people, good people, so if they're dead they won't be sent to hell." Then he looks up at Loki, and maybe there's a spark of life left there, after all, if not much of one. 

"But you? Yeah, that makes sense. And at least you're not boring." 

Norns help them all. This is Loki's best chance, Asgard's best chance, sitting here mouldering. But he must be patient. 

"Tony," he says, "I'm not dead. And neither are you." 

The life in Stark's eyes looms large and terrible, and for a moment, Loki is afraid. But it all turns inward, quick as a blink. 

"Do you know how much WORSE that makes everything right now?" Stark yells, arms flailing wildly. "Do you? I'm the one left alive again, and I shouldn't be. So many good people have died and I keep surviving and I can't understand why." Stark looks down again, muttering the next bit. "Ungrateful assholes, some of 'em, but somehow always measure up better than me." 

Loki is silent for a long moment. Then he sits down, conjuring a chair for himself next to Stark's. 

"I do know." 

Stark's gaze latches onto him like a lifeline. 

For the first time since he arrived, the strongest emotion Loki's feeling is something other than despair. 


End file.
